I came home tonight and on the news was a story about a new college grad who went to Yale, graduated last week, and died in a car accident this week. Such a tragic story, and it sadly happens all the time. Now what made this girl different was that she wrote for the school paper and published an essay to her graduating class that stuck with many people around the nation. Her words are very near to my heart, she was able to put exactly how I have felt at so many points in my life into words and on paper, when I was never even sure how to express what I was feeling. I feel like everyone should read her words of wisdom. Below is her article:
| 3:10 a.m. | May. 27, 2012 | By Marina Keegan
KEEGAN: The Opposite of Loneliness
The piece below was written by Marina Keegan '12 for a special edition of the News distributed at the class of 2012's commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.
We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.
It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.
Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.
This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.
But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves...” “if I’d...” “wish I’d...”
Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.
But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.
We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.
When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.
For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…
What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.
In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.
We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.
We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.
from: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/may/27/keegan-opposite-loneliness/
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I felt this same way when I graduated college. I graduated with that Biology degree that I couldn't do anything with. But I graduated in 4 years! However, I wanted to switch to nursing half way through but I felt it was "too late." I wouldn't have graduated on time had I switched my major. So I didn't. Instead I graduated, then decided to go back to nursing school and graduate again 2 years later. I am glad I quickly realized too that I was still so young, I could still do ANYTHING I wanted to do. So I went back and got that second degree, and I am so glad I did. I could have easily said it was "too late" and then who knows where I would be right now.
These words from Marina Keegan came at a perfect time for me. I have been struggling with decisions on what to do with my life. I have been thinking about travel nursing, and probably have done nothing but talk about that for the past year. I'm just too scared to actually do it...right now. I have thought about going back to a hospital job, I have thought about changing specialties and working in pediatrics. I have thought about working in an ICU and going back to school. I have thought about picking up and just moving somewhere I have never lived because I have lived in GA my whole life. Lately I've been thinking that I need to hurry up and decide before it's too late to do anythign. But Marina Keegan reminded me today that I will always have possibilities out there. She reminded me that I am still young and can do whatever I want. I still have many chances to make a difference and leave my footprint behind. So thank you Marian Keegan for leaving your beautiful, inspirational words behind. You have reminded me of exactly how I once felt and helped me to never lose sight of that.
